Tarter: Lacking news perspective with new cuts

In case you missed H. Wayne Wilson's interview in Friday's Journal Star, the host of the "At Issue" program on WTVP-TV Channel 47, Peoria's public television outlet, made an interesting point.

"While there have been many technological advancements (in the past 25 years), the biggest change has been newsroom consolidation and an increase in the amount of news offered by commercial television stations without a corresponding increase in staff," noted Wilson.

The result — along with the fact that many of the TV reporters are young and new to the market — means some television news reports lack perspective, he stated. Plus, there are very few in-depth investigative stories, added Wilson.

But the consolidation that Wilson referred to isn't just limited to TV's commercial side. We're seeing signs of it on the public side, as well.

WTVP general manager Chet Tomczyk recently took on a dual role: he not only manages Channel 47 in Peoria but commutes to Champaign-Urbana to oversee operations at WILL, a public station on the campus of the University of Illinois.

"The arrangement grew out of a neighborly collaborative relationship between the stations as well as a desire to save personnel costs," stated Dru Sefton in a story in Current.org, a Washington, D.C.-based publication covering public media.

Talk of a full-out merger may be premature. "It's much too early to even speculate on a marriage — we just started dating," noted Tomczyk.

But public TV, long the whipping boy of budget-cutting hawks, can't stand pat in the face of funding cuts. While federal support is anything but secure, state funding for stations like Channel 47 has declined dramatically, said Tomczyk.

"Eight years ago, the state provided public broadcasting with $5 million. It's under $2 million right now," he said.

"More and more, public TV stations depend on money raised locally. The challenge is how can we cooperate and collaborate to provide meaningful content here," said Tomczyk.

It's a challenge alright. Public TV sees an opportunity to do more local programming — to complement the "Downtown Abbey" and "Nova" programs — but who's to do it?

In the case of the two stations that Tomczyk is managing, the Peoria station has 17 employees — about one third of the staff that the U of I operation has.

But Channel 47 has some assets that WILL doesn't have: a larger studio, a mobile production vehicle and satellite truck.

The challenge is to mobilize various public TV resources on Illinois-focused stories — and keep them coming.

Several years ago, Wilson proposed a newsy week-in-review program for Channel 47 that never made it on air due to a lack of funding.

So the additional challenge for public TV is not only to find programs that fill a void in the local market but to find underwriters willing to support them.

Steve Tarter is Journal Star business editor. Tarter's phone number is 686-3260, and his email address is starter@pjstar.com. Follow his blog, Minding Business, on pjstar.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveTarter